The video game that will prove you deserve a job in commodities trading

If you're looking for a job on a trading desk, there's an abundance of resources available to help you pass behavioural interviews. Surviving the practical tests is another matter. One ex-intern of a commodities trading house has built a free-to-play video game to fix that.

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Deacon Larson, a University of Southern California student, has released a video game titled 'Crude Desk' based on trading simulations commodities firms use to test applicants during their interview processes. You play a junior trader who supports the head of a trading desk while rising the ranks. The game starts out simple, but adds increasingly complex mechanics on each new level that increasingly force you to make decisions under pressure. Mechanically, it's like the trading equivalent of Papers Please.

Larson, who previously interned at metals trading firm Gerald Group, said the game is not fully accurate as he "simplified the mechanics to make the fundamentals more accessible to beginners while maintaining the fast-paced, challenging nature of trading simulations."

You can play Crude Desk here. It also has a leaderboard, which you can use to stake your claim as the next Yaoyao liu. 

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